


After 02x09 (The Lost Heir Job)

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [23]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:56:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6524761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot and Parker discuss taking on Tara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After 02x09 (The Lost Heir Job)

A soft footfall and the scent of gardenias alerted Eliot to Parker’s presence half a second before she appeared on the barstool next to him. He raised his hand to get another beer as she swiped his from in front of him. These were the sort of things you got used to, practically living with a professional kleptomaniac.

“Hey, Parker,” he said in greeting. She hardly ever returned it, but you got used to that, too.

“I don’t trust her,” she said without preamble.

“I know,” he reassured her. “I don’t either.”

There was a moment of silence from Parker and flirting from Eliot as Cora brought over his (new) beer. When they were alone again, Parker demanded, “Do the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where you say that she’s an ex-KGB assassin with ties to the Mafia because of her shoes.”

“Oh, that thing,” Eliot had to smile. He’d know more once he saw her in action in the field, but he already had a few suspicions. It helped that her name wasn’t completely unfamiliar. Vance had mentioned her a time or two, though they had never been on the same dance team. “Well, the way she moves says ex-military, probably Army. She doesn’t scream CIA to me, but she could be FBI trained. It’s somethin’ about the way they case a room when they enter and size up potential threats.”

“Very distinctive?”

Eliot nodded. “I don’t know much about her history, but I have heard her name before. She mostly grifts in Europe and Canada, because she doesn’t want to muddy the waters here at home. Plays small games for cash and jewelry, when she’s not trading favors with shady military guys.”

“I don’t like her.”

“What do you want me to say, Parker? You don’t have to like her, you just have to work with her. An’ ya gotta admit, we do need a grifter.”

“I’m not adorable,” the thief pouted. Adorably.

Eliot grinned. “Is that what this is really about?”

“I’m not! Maggie’s adorable. I’m… dangerous.”

Parker thought Maggie was adorable, as best Eliot could tell, because she was the epitome of a citizen, a civilian, and yet had some idea of the kind of work the Leverage team did because of Nate and the two Davids job. She might have been the most innocent adult (and the most genuinely good person) Parker had ever interacted with.

Hardison, Nate, Sophie, and by extension, it seemed, Tara, thought _Parker_ was adorable because of the childish façade she put up on a daily basis, and the way she consistently failed to interact normally with the world around her in ways that seemed simplistic and innocent. This never seemed to bother her before. (Eliot, of course, knew that she was dangerous, too. If you asked him, she was the most dangerous person on the team, between her skills, her emotional instability, and her black-and-white (Parker-vs-not Parker) worldview.)

“You can be both,” he said lightly, and then, as she was still glaring at him, he added, “Will you relax? It’s a good thing when they underestimate you.”

“Not when it’s the people I’m s’posed to be working with,” she grumbled.

“Look, Parker, ex-Army, ex-feds are never, ever gonna take you seriously as a threat. You gotta work with what you got, and you’re not the kind of scary they’re used to recognizin’.”

“That’s not the point, Eliot!” she said, sounding genuinely frustrated. “Adorable isn’t just not-scary, it’s… helpless. You protect it. Hardison’s not-scary. He’s not dangerous, but he’s not adorable. I don’t need people to think I’m scary, but I don’t wanna work with a grifter that thinks I can’t take care of myself.”

Eliot took a minute to try to parse through the statement about Hardison. He gave up halfway through in favor of focusing on the beginning and end of the complaint, figuring that it was just an example she thought was helping to clarify when it wasn’t at all. “You know, she got that opinion from Sophie.”

“So?”

“So, Sophie thinks you’re adorable too. And Nate, and Hardison,” he added for good measure.

“They don’t count.”

Eliot snorted, trying to suppress a laugh at her stubborn expression. “Why not?”

“Because they’re… us. Ours. Already. _She_ isn’t. We could still tell her to go away.” Eliot mentally translated this as ‘They’re already family and we’re stuck with them, but if we have to take on another grifter, understanding [Parker] should be part of the interview.’

“Sorry to tell ya’, sweetheart, but we’re not gonna do any better.”

“How do you know?”

“She’s a professional, she’s clearly competent, and Sophie vouched for her. There’s only so many good grifters out there, and I can’t think of any who’d meet those requirements _and_ have the right background to see you as anything but adorable, especially when they don’t know ya.” He could, actually, think of one or two people – a burned CIA agent and an ex-assassin – who might be equally competent grifters _and_ take Parker seriously, but he somehow doubted either of them were available, and anyway, Sophie hadn’t sent _them_. She doubtless had something on Tara that made her trust the woman – there was no such thing as simple friendship between con artists.

“I’m a _thief_. That should automatically put me in the not-adorable category,” Parker muttered. “Aren’t grifters supposed to be good at reading people?”

“Well, yeah, but there’s somethin’ wrong with you.” Eliot couldn’t help himself. He was rewarded with a dig in the ribs from Parker’s very sharp elbow. That might have actually left a bruise, damn it. “Seriously, though, Parker, you know how grifters read marks?”

“No. How?”

“Experience. Lots of it. And generalization. Most people’s motivations boil down to fear – fear of loss or insecurity or age or whatever. Remember the Order 23 guy? What they want comes from that fear, and when you con them, you play on those fears and desires to make them think you have exactly what they want. _You_ don’t fear the same things as most people, you don’t want the same things as most people, you don’t have the same experiences, so you’re not even lookin’ at the same playbook as most people. That makes you hard for them to read, and harder to predict and manipulate.” Up until they realized that she would do anything for pancakes and a promise to help her steal either a lot of money, or very shiny jewelry, of course. For a multi-millionaire who appeared to have everything she wanted, Parker was absurdly easy to bribe.

“You can read me,” she pointed out quietly.

“Yeah, well, I been watchin’ you for a while now. I like to think I know you better than most. And I have a lot more experience with your kind of background than your average grifter.”

Parker apparently had nothing to say to that, because she was silent for a long moment, and when she spoke again, it was to change the subject back to their original topic. “I still don’t trust her.”

“Do you trust Sophie?”

Parker hesitated, but eventually said, “Yes. Mostly.”

Eliot almost sighed. He himself had had a lot of trouble trusting the grifter again after they returned from their six-month sabbatical. While she definitely wasn’t the only one of them to have screwed up because her emotions got the better of her, she was the only one who had attempted to deliberately con the team for her own benefit. Since they had returned, he still watched her more closely than he once had for any signs of another betrayal. But there had been no such signs at all, and he did trust that she was doing right by them in sending Tara, if for no other reason than he couldn’t think of any way it would have a pay-out for her to turn on them again. So he trusted her too. Mostly.

“Then you have to trust that she either trusts Tara, or has some leverage over her, and she’ll play us fair,” he said simply.

Parker didn’t answer, just sitting there, almost suspiciously quietly, until she had finished the rest of her (Eliot’s) beer, at which point she slipped away, leaving the empty bottle and a pile of shredded paper – the remnants of its label – behind.

It wasn’t until he left the bar and was halfway home that Eliot realized Parker’s irritation wasn’t really about a lack of trust (though he didn’t doubt that she mistrusted the new grifter as much as he did) or the fact that everyone else saw her as the most innocent member of the team – it was about respect, for her skills and expertise, that ‘adorable’ didn’t recognize.

_Damn it._

He kicked himself for not seeing it sooner (especially since he’d just had a talk with Hardison about something similar not too long before), and made a mental note to find an opportunity to reassure her that they were all well aware of her abilities and her role on the team… despite how adorable she was between jobs.


End file.
